'I'm a celebrity, get me an honorary degree!'

Why bother going to college, studying hard and getting into debt for the sake of some letters after your name? All you need to do is get famous - and they'll throw doctorates at you. But why? Stuart Jeffries reports

On July 11 2001, Billy Connolly was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Glasgow. He was thrilled, telling reporters: "It's an enormous honour to get, especially from academia, because my behaviour over the years hasn't exactly been academic. I have had salmon flies named after me and I thought that was my lot."

The Daily Mail eulogised the Scottish funnyman's honour: "The boy from Anderston may have left school aged 15 with no qualifications but his success on stage and screen has more than earned him his place among the nation's brightest talents."

I love that phrase "more than earned". It suggests: you may think you're clever Stephen Hawking, and all you other big-brained Britons, but you're nothing next to the Big Yin. You might think the phrase "less than earned" would have been more appropriate, but that would show you to be out of step with what celebrity can achieve in what many contend is this increasingly dumb Britain.

Celebrating the award with him in 2001 was his wife Pamela Stephenson, who five years earlier had completed six years' study for a PhD in clinical psychology at the California Graduate Institute. In the light of Connolly's honorary degree, one really wonders why she bothered. Indeed, at a time when a degree costs at least three years of your life minimum and up to £20,000 in tuition fees and living costs, why does any student bother? Surely it would be much less demanding to become famous for something fatuous (how's your father in the BB Jacuzzi, centre-court streaking) and then issue your demand: "I'm a celebrity, get me an honorary doctorate!"

This, you might be forgiven for thinking, is the way academia is going. In 2002, for example, the University of Wolverhampton gave honorary degrees to members of Slade. Italian referee Pierluigi Collina has one from Hull. Over-indulged bigmouth TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has one from Oxford Brookes University. Michael Douglas and Joanna Lumley just got ones from St Andrews (his is for - no really - "services to film"). The Bee Gees' Robin and Barry Gibb are honorary doctors of music at the University of Manchester, sharing their degree with their late brother Maurice. The titles are revealing: a Doctor of Letters is usually accorded to arty types or entertainers; when Kofi Annan received his honorary doctorate from Oxford they made him a doctor of civil law - there is method in the honorary madness. There is, however, only one Honorary Doctorate in Amphibious Studies: it was awarded to Kermit the Frog in 1996 by Long Island's Southampton College (whatever that is).

At least Connolly was gracious about his honorary degree. He said of his wife: "Pamela is a real doctor, she's got the six-year job." But then if Stephenson holds the real degree, what - really - is the point of Connolly's? One explanation came from John Caughie, dean of the faculty of arts at Glasgow. Presenting Connolly with his degree, he said: "His appeal is international and he should be honoured for that. But more locally, his achievement traces the route by which we in Scotland became more confident - and more critical - of ourselves, able to take ourselves and our bodily functions a little less seriously." If they're giving out doctorates for making us laugh at our digestive tracts, while perhaps not offering them, say, to those who study said tracts, perhaps something has gone terribly wrong in British academia.

As it was, one wasn't enough for the Big Yin. Earlier this week he donned robes again and joined actor Tilda Swinton and singer Annie Lennox in Glasgow, where all three received honorary degrees from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. "I read that David Attenborough has 29 honorary degrees," he said, "but I think two will do me." This is good news, because celebrity honorary degree-itis can actually become an addiction: Desmond Tutu has 30.

This addiction to honours cuts both ways, however: what academic institution would not want to confer an honorary degree on Nelson Mandela? (He already holds 53, nine of them from British institutions.)

St Andrews seems particularly amenable to giving celebs honorary degrees. Why? "It is a good way of bringing universities closer to the communities they serve," says director of press Niall Scott. "It also gets the university's name and some nice pictures in the paper ... the media has become so obsessed with the cult of celebrity these days that only the star names stand out." So the media (as always!) is to blame for this benighted trend. This week Private Eye published Michael Douglas's degree citation in Latin, hailing the "Actum Thespianorum magnifico in particulare 'Attractiuone Fatali' et 'Instincto Fundamentali' cum Sharon Lapida (Audultus Solus XXX)." I hope that was the sort of press coverage St Andrews wanted.

How are the celebs chosen? "For outstanding contribution to their fields," says Scott, but then he isn't responsible for Slade's honorary degree. Scott also points out that St Andrews doesn't give honours for favours, or cash. The online college Regent International University, however, offers honorary degrees for a "minimum honorarium of $299" that will give you "the satisfaction of knowing that you have become a benefactor and patron of a non-profit instituting [sic] of higher education". To order an honorary degree right now, go to: www.regentinternational.net/honorarydegree.htm.

Who will resist this trend? Consider what happened in Melbourne in May 1986 when Prince Philip arrived to launch Monash University's 25th anniversary celebrations and pick up an honorary science degree. Two protesters interrupted the ceremony, calling the prince a "parasite" for accepting the degree. Members of the Monash Association of Students had earlier given a 21-month-old chihuahua an honorary science degree. A spokesman said the dog had as much right to a degree as the duke. Other suggested it had much more.

Or consider that heartening moment when Jeremy Clarkson was hit by a custard pie thrown by a vegetarian while picking up his degree for his "contribution to learning and society". George W Bush, too, earned protests from Yale when he was given an honorary degree by his alma mater in 2001, while Oxford academics refused to give Margaret Thatcher one. In May this year, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez believed Oxford dons were going to award him an honorary degree - but that proved to be a misunderstanding. Such is the crazy world of honorary degrees: Clarkson gets the nod, political leaders get two fingers.

In such circumstances, why would anyone want one? The Big Yin offered up one possible answer this week. "If you don't go through higher education in the first place, you go through life thinking you're not that bright," he said. But, of course, part of the enduring mystery of honorary degrees is they do get handed out to people with actual degrees. Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger has apparently not yet had time to pick up his honorary degree from London Metropolitan University, but why, with a masters in economics from Strasbourg and the nickname the professor, would he want to accept a degree that confers no real prestige but puts him on a footing with a muppet? You'd need two (real) PhDs to answer that.